My Basement Project
Yesterday I was absent from the interwebs. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I did not check my email or Facebook until at least 9 last night. If you were trying to contact me, I’m sorry. However, I’m sure I was not that missed.
I was pretty busy though. The girls and I ran off some energy at Papa’s Pumpkin Patch, and then came home to tackle our basement.
One of my favorite features of our home is the basement. Our 1959 ranch style home has a finished, daylight, walk out basement. The main finished room is 700 square feet, there is also a laundry room, full bathroom and a space. That space has largely been undefined during our four years in this house.
Our original plan for the basement was to have the large room be a family room/rec room. Our upstairs living room was to be a more formal (read: no kid junk and no TV) gathering space. For a full year and a half we enjoyed living much of our day downstairs. Before Ethan started school full time, we would head down to the basement after seeing the big kids off and we would play with playdoh, watch Little Einsteins, blog, scrapbook and watch the dog chase squirrels in the backyard. The undefined basement space was a bit of a guest bedroom. It was unfinished, but it was a private space and it was close to a bathroom. Soon, I transformed it to a really nice scrapbooking space.
Then I got pregnant, then we found out it was twins, then I was put on modified bedrest and was given permission to go up and down those stairs one time a day. We had to rearrange the main floor bedrooms to make room for two babies. The TV was moved to our main floor living room along with my ugly, but comfy recliner. The computer moved to the main floor as well. I came to terms with the fact that my paper scrapbooking days were likely over. The downstairs family room became a combined rec room for the boys and a guest room. My scrapbook space? It became a place to pile everything we did not know what to do with. Things generally got tossed onto the large table or stacked underneath or wherever they managed to land. I began averting my eyes when I went down there. The Rev. was beginning to lose patience with it.
We’ve been talking about transforming the big room into a room for the older boys. We have new windows on order, and we need to select some new carpet. This week we began moving them to the basement room (they love it), and I finally began to tackle the scrapbook room.
What an improvement!
I spent Friday afternoon sorting through endless bins of toys and tossing all of the broken, incomplete or unloved/outgrown toys. I was pretty ruthless. There comes a point in large families in which you realize that you need a lot less stuff than you think you do. I emptied the whole room, and then the Rev. pushed my scrapbook table up against the wall to serve as a counter top, and assembled these big, heavy duty shelving units. I moved the board games to the lower shelves so the boys can actually access and put the games away (they used to be on a high shelf), I found all kinds of leftover math manipulatives from our homeschool days that will be perfect for Tot School. I also had room to move all of our Tot School supplies out of the girls’ bedroom (they tend to get into those bins and make a mess!). The picture here does not do it justice. . .it actually looks much neater in person. And trust me, I was kind by sparing you the “before” photo. (Think hoarders).
I still have some work to do, and many of the toys and books will be moving to the church once construction is completed. (We’re also donating the crib, so I won’t have to be sad about getting rid of it, I can see it every week!). I mostly feel relieved, like a big elephant is off my back now that it is done!
Chime in! Do you have a space in your house that lacks definition? Do you have a dumping ground at your house? Have you tackled a similar project? I’d love to hear from you (and hear your storage solutions!)
Garage,garage,garage – it needs a lot of love from me right now and it’s not getting it. It needs a set of shelves, and a good solid tidying – it’s a mess!
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I also like to make changes in basement. During last basement remodeling project, my contractor has changed the walls window into shelves, shelves are looking beautiful in basement. In my next basement remodeling project I would definitely change the furniture.
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